Instances of this sort were perpetual.  Yet S. was thought by some of the greatest men of his time a fit person to be consulted, not alone in matters pertaining to the law, but in the ordinary niceties and embarrassments of conduct—­from force of manner entirely.  He never laughed.  He had the same good fortune among the female world,—­was a known toast with the ladies, and one or two are said to have died for love of him—­I suppose, because he never trifled or talked gallantry with them, or paid them, indeed, hardly common attentions.  He had a fine face and person, but wanted, methought, the spirit that should have shown them off with advantage to the women.  His eye lacked lustre.—­Not so, thought Susan P——­; who, at the advanced age of sixty, was seen, in the cold evening time, unaccompanied, wetting the pavement of B——­d Row, with tears that fell in drops which might be heard, because her friend had died that day—­he, whom she had pursued with a hopeless passion for the last forty years—­a passion, which years could not extinguish or abate; nor the long resolved, yet gently enforced, puttings off of unrelenting bachelorhood dissuade from its cherished purpose.  Mild Susan P——­, thou hast now thy friend in heaven!

Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family of that name.  He passed his youth in contracted circumstances, which gave him early those parsimonious habits which in after-life never forsook him; so that, with one windfall or another, about the time I knew him he was master of four or five hundred thousand pounds; nor did he look, or walk, worth a moidore less.  He lived in a gloomy house opposite the pump in Serjeant’s-inn, Fleet-street.  J., the counsel, is doing self-imposed penance in it, for what reason I divine not, at this day.  C. had an agreeable seat at North Cray, where he seldom spent above a day or two at a time in the summer; but preferred, during the hot months, standing at his window in this damp, close, well-like mansion, to watch, as he said, “the maids drawing water all day long.”  I suspect he had his within-door reasons for the preference. Hic currus et arma fuere.  He might think his treasures more safe.  His house had the aspect of a strong box.  C. was a close hunks—­a hoarder rather than a miser—­or, if a miser, none of the mad Elwes breed, who have brought discredit upon a character, which cannot exist without certain admirable points of steadiness and unity of purpose.  One may hate a true miser, but cannot, I suspect, so easily despise him.  By taking care of the pence, he is often enabled to part with the pounds, upon a scale that leaves us careless generous fellows halting at an immeasurable distance behind.  C. gave away 30,000_l_. at once in his life-time to a blind charity.  His house-keeping was severely looked after, but he kept the table of a gentleman.  He would know who came in and who went out of his house, but his kitchen chimney was never suffered to freeze.